If you’re invited for dinner with The President at The White House , you are not going to show up with some 3 day old MacDonald’s you have rotten away in your fridge, who does that right? You’ll probably go with an empty stomach to enjoy all the savory dishes the white house chefs have got to offer.
If Oprah offers you a full wardrobe makeover from the best designers she has access to, and we know that’s a lot of great designers! I don’t think you’ll tag along with your store bought, bad fitting jeans, and ask that she add that to the mix. Nope, if you could trash all your old clothes you probably would.
Ok what of this? If you win an all-expense paid stay in the ‘Royal Penthouse suite at The Hotel President Wilson in Geneva, Switzerland (The one that costs about $60,000 a night…yeah that one). Will you tag along with your old dirty bed-sheets for the Maître D to lay your bed with? Once again…really who does that??? You can probably imagine the Maître D, sticking his nose up to such an act, and rightly so. On the contrary you’ll bask in and enjoy everything the hotel has to offer, no input whatsoever on your part.
In the same light God has invited you to enjoy the priceless righteousness He bought for you with the precious blood of His son, please stop insisting on bringing along your filthy raggedy-rags righteousness. Enjoy the free gift of righteousness you have been given by grace, and enjoy all the benefits that Jesus bought for you no input from you. Stop trying to drag your works along.
Makes sense ? I believe so 🙂
And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work. (Romans 11:6)
But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; ( Isaiah 64:6)
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Grace Notes 
Is this something like filthy rags…Moaning ” Oh, I am no good. I never do anything right.”? When all along all you have to do is confess your sin and ask for forgiveness and start all over again.?? Is that a way that we sometimes drag our dirty rags along?
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The ‘I am no good’ is a common one with us like you rightly said, and it comes from a place of thinking we were ever good to begin with. When we realize we were never good to begin with, and we are good(righteous) only because Jesus says we are as a result of what He ( and He alone) finished on the cross and nothing we do….we begin to leave that particular ‘no good’ rag behind.
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I believe bringing our own smelly bedsheets is what we do cause we think somehow they are better than what God has to offer. Before we become Christians, we rely on how ‘good’ we are and then we never quite leave it alone when we become saved. We stick with the phariseical deeds of comparing ourselves with each other instead of looking onto God. I pray that we will learn to humble ourselves in God over and over again.
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I pray so too, I really do. when I was preparing to write this, I just imagined angels staring at us and thinking how ridiculous we were every time we dragged our smelly rags into God’s throne room. whispering to themselves and going….seriously??? Yeah I know that’s just my imagination, but when we really think about it…it does show us as ridiculous.
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